Food processing devices providing a number of different types of food preparations, such as mixing, grinding, chopping, slicing, grating, shredding, or other processing operations, are well known. Existing food processing devices typically include a base housing an electric motor, a drive shaft driven by the motor, a bowl receivable on the base and a lid or cover having a feed tube releasably mounted to the bowl. A rotatably driven blade is mounted to the drive shaft to process one or more food items inside the bowl.
While existing food processing devices are generally suitable for what is regarded as ordinary performance, there is still room for improvement. In particular, one problem with existing food processing devices is that when a foodstuff, for instance a leaf vegetable or a root vegetable is pushed down through the bowl inlet opening and disintegrated by the cutting tool, the disintegrated foodstuff is thrown out onto the vertical container walls and sticks thereto. This also applies, for instance, to sauce ingredients or dough ingredients introduced into the bowl through its inlet opening. As the ingredients are introduced into the bowl and come into contact with the rapidly rotating cutting tool, the ingredients are thrown vigorously onto the walls of the bowl.
Typically, a user must stop processing, remove the lid and manually scrape the walls of the bowl, then replace the lid and continue processing. This process must be repeated until the foodstuff is uniformly processed. Accordingly, there is a need for a mechanism for scraping the interior walls of the bowl during processing of foodstuffs so that uniform processing can be realized.